The group's charitable acts range from helping to feed a family whose father was out of work to helping kids at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

And this winter, assuming a sizable snowstorm strikes, members stand ready to help shovel driveways.

Business giants such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Marshall Field's, McDonald's, Betty Crocker and Outback Steakhouse have made donations. A representative of Walter Payton Enterprises sent out autographed posters for a fundraising effort. All without any significant publicity, Web site or hot line.

"It has really just been word of mouth, usually at Prairieview School in Bartlett, where our kids go," said Leslie Petramale, who founded the group with Christine Plier, owner of a Bloomingdale flower shop. "Churches have carried news about us in their bulletins, and if there is a local carnival or something, we've put out notices."

Plier said the club was founded in late 1998, spurred by a group of Prairieview teachers who wanted to help pupil Tim King, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The group raised about $5,000 in 10 days, she said.

Word of the club's efforts has grown steadily. "Finding a worthy cause is no longer a problem," Petramale said.

"It's finding new and inventive ways to obtain funding, other than tapping into the pockets of the Mothers' Club families and our local communities. We have learned that businesses and local organizations are there to help contribute, and we're trying to find ways to team them up with us."

Marklund Children's Home in Bloomingdale receives regular assistance from a number of club members. Volunteer coordinator Vicki Solone said Petramale contacted Marklund offering help.

"We were having this activity with a western hoedown theme for the first time and having a crisis," Solone said. "We needed these bandana-handkerchief things."

Using money it had raised, partially through a garage sale, the club bought the materials and sewed more than 100 of them.

"Some of the people there needed bibs, and the only donations we could get were things that kids wear, which we felt would be demeaning," Plier said. "A bunch of us got together and, using an assembly-line method, sewed these bibs with a Western look that were more appropriate."

Among the other things the group did last year were filling Easter baskets with goodies to raise money for Children's Memorial and staging a benefit concert, featuring the local a cappella group Stormy Weather, that netted $11,000.

The club's membership has grown to 37 women and men, Petramale said. "The club isn't just moms anymore. In terms of what we call it, we just needed a name. We know that if someone's mother isn't there, fathers jump in and handle things. Our group is more about heart than professionalism."